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Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Excellent article.

You can't study consciousness directly in a lab but it's pretty easy to "merge" with others under the right conditions.

For example, here's an old experiment with "mutual hypnosis": two people hypnotizing each other at the same time.

"Psychedelic experiences associated with a novel hypnotic procedure, mutual hypnosis." Am J Clin Hypn. 1967 Oct;10(2):65-78. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6080106

Anything which causes entrainment between two dynamic systems is essentially combining them into one dynamic system. E.g. something as simple as deliberately breathing in sync with each other can begin to develop consciousness merging.

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> "Psychedelic experiences associated with a novel hypnotic procedure, mutual hypnosis." Am J Clin Hypn. 1967 Oct;10(2):65-78. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6080106*
Like much of Tart's other work "studying" the paranormal[1], this is pseudoscience. There is no good evidence for hypnosis.
1. http://skepdic.com/tart.html

Capital-S Skeptics are a strongly biased source, eh?
> There is no good evidence for hypnosis.
That's just ridiculous.

> That's just ridiculous.
Depends on your definition of 'hypnosis'. There are some pretty prosaic definitions that are clearly and repeatably demonstrable. There are also, at the other end of the spectrum, some pretty extraordinary claims for "what it is" and "what it can do". The former is riduculous, and for the latter, skepticism seems to be prudent, pending further articulation.

> Depends on your definition of 'hypnosis'.
Well, yeah.
The best book on hypnosis I know of opens with one of the co-authors stating that "there's no such thing as hypnosis" and the other stating "everything is hypnosis".
> The former is ridiculous ...
The "clearly and repeatably demonstrable" definitions are ridiculous?

Sounds like Bandler channeling Heller.

"Ah, I see you're a man of culture as well." :-)
Yes, that's from "TRANCE-formations" by Bandler and Grinder.
And, yeah, for my money, Heller's "Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing as Hypnosis?" is the other best book on the subject. Well met.

Can we keep Mr tart and his activities separate from evidence based clinical hypnosis? https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=related:KwgeveOpv0sJ:sc...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4873672/

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